(Update: To clarify, I refer to conservative thinkers in this piece and add Gillespie to the group. I don’t mean to characterize — at all — the Reason editor as a “typical” conservative. Gillespie is a libertarian who is conservative in the free-markets sense of the word, but his views on socials issues are more complex.)

Your Spotted This Morning correspondent, who relishes going Gonzo whenever possible, left his basement blogging HQ this weekend and went into the field for a little research.

I wanted to see first-hand what Colorado conservatives were up to during this time that Republicans are spectacularly flaming out in the governor’s race.

Relaxing under a tent with cigars and drinks after a morning of sporting clays, the institute’s Jon Caldara[3] said to great laughter that it was now time for Republicans to collect their shotguns, form a circle and aim for the center.

I literally could not swallow most of went down at my first visit to the Independence Institute[6]’s annual summer fete.

It was last year and my problem wasn’t solely due to the fact the ATF’s keynote speaker was Joe the Plumber[7] – and that Joe was at least as annoying as I would have imagined he would be if given booze, a sympathetic audience and a microphone.

Rather, my problem was that I had grilled lamb steaks the night before – rare – and apparently had an allergic reaction to the blood.

Or perhaps I was just nervous about showing up at a gathering of conservatives with guns.

Whatever the cause, my throat closed so tightly I couldn’t swallow even a sip of water.

When I left my home that next morning to head for the shooting and drinking and smoking, I was undecided on whether I would attend or divert to the nearest emergency room.

The condition lasted till noon, when my throat opened and I drank the best-tasting, most-life-affirming bottle of Gatorade I have ever downed – and in one long pull.

So I didn’t care that Joe the Plumber was holding forth with an ode to driving his gas guzzler across America’s pristine places because it was his God-given right to do so. Or something.

This year’s ATF featured Nick Gillespie[8], editor of Reason.com[9] and Reason.TV[10], an urbane sophisticate who, until Saturday, had never fired a gun, and who failed to hit a single flying clay disk in the few rounds he attended before sneaking away to crib out his presentation on a hotel memo pad. (Note to politicians: Real thinkers write their own material.)

Gillespie is a true intellectual, who can, before finishing his lunch, discuss how “The Great Gatsby” might be written today, switch to a riff on free-market reasons for supporting a value-added tax, reference economic studies that detail the “self-correcting” tax distribution in European countries that have applied a VAT, chart from memory the nation’s deficit spending patterns since the Great Depression, and all while handling a pretend-I’m-interested discussion with a political candidate whose conversation is limited to repeating the phrase, “It’ll be a real dog-fight, in every sense of the word.”

Gillespie’s address dropped Joe the Plumber’s “throw the bums out” rant tactic, and, as he is wont to do, appealed to reason.

While Gillespie began by mocking the more out-there recent excesses of the Nanny State (such as bans on “fish pedicures”[11]), his goal was to argue that such debates were mostly trivial symptoms of a larger ill.

Gillespie also departed from the political tactic of describing the condition of the country as headed for ashes unless something urgent and spectacular reverses our course.

Instead, Gillespie cast our nation’s present state of existence as a Golden Age of plenty.

Even in this down economy, our supermarkets contain more delights and goodies and nourishments than any civilization has ever before imagined, Gillespie said. Our standard of living remains terrifically high.

But, Gillespie said, one of the dangers of prosperity and comfortable living is that you can get soft-headed.

When you’re hungry and struggling, you tend to focus on the necessary.

When you live with plenty, you have to remember to focus on the necessary.

And so it is that our freedoms are being threatened by lawmakers and supporters with “collectivist” ambitions that could slow our progress and diminish our prospects, Gillespie warned.

In short, we have too much to lose, Gillespie said. That’s why conservatives are worried about the growth of government; they don’t want to mess up a good deal.

So, Gillespie exhorted the crowd, raise your children to be responsible and mindful of the rewards available to them. Raise them to resist the impulse of over-reaching politicians who wish to limit our freedoms.

And enjoy your day.

It was the kind of address I didn’t expect to hear after stopping by Tea Party gatherings at the state capitol over the last year or so.

And yes, there are plenty of conservative thinkers, like Gillespie, who make reasoned arguments. But please give your Spotted This Morning correspondent a little slack – because you’ve got to admit that the storyline that usually gets told focuses on the folks with the Gadsden flags[12].

Is this a new development among conservatives, or just a moment of clarity?

Because communicating those kinds of ideas – should we hear more of them – would be appealing to Colorado’s large segment of independent, unaffiliated voters worried about the direction of our state and nation, but who aren’t ready to start toting pitchforks and torches.

If that kind of thinking becomes a clear message from the right, it will become more difficult for opponents to shrug off conservative thinkers as misanthropic or selfish.

Or so it seemed on an afternoon fueled by shotgun adrenaline, iced whiskey and that unique euphoria that accompanies a once-a-year cigar.